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When Siamese twins Daisy and Violet performed at Devon 'freak show'

The conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet, were just 25 years old and a huge draw with their vaudeville revue which was about to open at Union Street's theatre

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by William Telford, Jon Bayley, Abbie Bray

10:53, 29 Oct 2017

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Pip and Flip

They were small in stature but their fame was immense and people across Devon turned out in their thousands to gawp at the Hilton Siamese twins when they arrived in Plymouth before treading the boards at the Palace Theatre.

The Plymouth Herald was even there to record the sisters stepping off the train at the old Millbay station on July 17, 1933, and being met by dignitaries.

The conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet, were just 25 years old and a huge draw with their vaudeville revue which was about to open at Union Street's theatre.

Pip and Flip

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The women, British born but raised in the USA, were also famous for having starred in one of the most controversial movies of all time: 1932’s Freaks, which was banned on this side of the Atlantic for decades – but is being screened in Plymouth as a pre-Halloween special.

And Devon author Johnny Mains will give a talk about the movie, and the Hilton sisters, to accompany his showing of Freaks, on Monday, October 30, 2017, at 7pm at the Jill Craigie Cinema at Plymouth University’s Roland Levinsky Building.

“Daisy and Violet were joined at the hips,” said Johnny, who has been commissioned to write a book about Freaks and has researched the women’s visit to Plymouth.

“They were sold by their mother at the age of six and taken to the States where they went into freak shows.

“They came to Plymouth in 1933, a year after the film came out, but weren’t allowed to talk about it because it was banned in this country.

“After they arrived at Millbay Station they went into the town and lots of people came out to see them. They even judged a ‘cutest twin’ competition.”

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The sisters later life was far less glamourous. They returned to the USA and, despite starring in a biopic called Chained for Life, saw their theatre career, and marriages, fail and ended up in poverty.

“They got a job in a grocery store,” said Johnny. “They stood behind the counter and people didn’t realise they were twins.

“They died of flu in the late 1960s, it was very tragic.”

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Meanwhile, the opposite happened to the movie which helped make them famous.

Freaks bombed when released and went unseen for years but is now seen as a genuine classic, unlike any movie made before or since, and one of Hollywood’s great achievements despite having been extensively cut by moguls at the time.

It tells the story of double-crossing, able bodied, lovers at a travelling circus and featured genuine acts from the time, including people with missing limbs, people of very short stature, “bearded” ladies, “skeleton” men, and people with microcephaly, at that time termed “pinheads”.

Audiences were shocked, not by the plot of the movie, which shows the “freaks” as decent people, but by their reaction to the cast. It effectively destroyed the career of director Tod Browning.

But Johnny, who is writing Freaks: A Biography, defended the movie and said: “It’s one of the most human films I have ever watched, it shows that disabled people are not monsters, as people back then thought they were. It was banned because it dared to show disabled people falling in love.”

Johnny, who is showing the film as part of his regular Johnny’s House of Horror series, said Freaks is in his top five movies of all-time.

“I have written more than 200,000 words already and I’m only half way through,” he said. “That includes biographies of every actor, the director, producer, editor, camera man, sound operator, everyone.”

Tickets for Freaks and Johnny’s talk cost £6 or £4.20 and details can be found at here